Let's face it, in this day and age it's pretty difficult to get lost, and if you have some sort of cellular device, near impossible. However, this doesn't mean you have to lose the thrill of the adventure. As often with any international bike riding holiday you can take the easy route and venture through your phone book in search of a connection and spot guide in said city, or as the modern traveller would now do, post a question on your social media while putting minimal effort into any fact finding of your own. 

This time, we left the button bashing and relied on the old fashioned act of the spot hunt. You've got to lay your markers and find the lay of the land. First point of call is usually to locate a hill, as for hills mean spots, but if you've ever been to or even know anything about Hamburg, it's as flat as a pancake. In this situation the more intellectually inclined would pull up a map of the city and decide on a variety of factors and thus select a route that made sense. We were not that way inclined however and took the title of this Monster Energy X DIG series a bit too literally. Hamburg isn't easy to navigate even with a faint sense of direction. With the mass WW2 bombings of Hamburg reaching it's pinnacle in 1943, the city was left devastated and much of it has been rebuilt since, and they definitely weren't shy of using a brick or two. This is all very interesting but can give the impression of everything looking like a clone of the other. Combine that with more bridges than in Venice, Amsterdam and London put together and you've got one confusing journey on the cards as soon as you drift from the waterfront. In addition to the the high volume of pointless pedalling we also encountered our fair share of German showers, and i'm not talking about the version you might find on the internet late at night. It rains a lot there. Thankfully though we managed to book a place to stay that looked onto a free indoor skatepark that would prove very helpful during the boring wet days. 

As for the crew on this first Lost In trip of 2018, we called upon the skills of TBB-Bike's barspin and tailwhip Instagram sensation Jiri Blabol, another TBB young recruit Raul Jula, Monster Energy's spelling-B nightmare Jason Eustathiou, DIG friend and Glaswegian handrail hanger-on Greg Layden, and finally the Czech technician and TBB vet Michal Smelko. The dream team you could say. 

Here's how it all went down...